Palo Alto, California -- PARC, a Xerox company, today launched the Emerging Networks Consortium (ENC), an initiative formed to advance the development of the next-generation Internet based on Content-Centric Networking (CCN). ENC brings together industries in different sectors to innovate, collaborate, and exchange experiences based on CCN implementations across various industries. Founding members include Alcatel-Lucent, BT, France Telecom-Orange, Huawei, MACH, Panasonic, and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. The formation of the ENC will pave the way for an entire industry to create and innovate networking products, services, and businesses.

PARC is continuing its notable legacy in networking with its work on CCN. Designed to match the way the network already works, CCN addresses many of the key problems facing the Internet today, including seamless content distribution, mobility, security, and scalability. PARC is well known for inventing networking technologies, going back to Ethernet, PUP, and XNS in the early days through significant contributions to IPv6 and Internet multicast.

"The Internet has gone from a communications channel to a media distribution channel, which has provided new and exciting opportunities," said Stephen Hoover, CEO, PARC. "The development of CCN will improve the Internet experience as people, equipped with several types of devices from smart phones to PCs to tablets, continue to share more and more content like videos, music, and photos. From business executives wanting to market products and services, to grandparents wanting to see the video of their grandkids playing soccer, CCN will improve these experiences. The formation of the ENC has the potential to help create significant, new opportunities."

"While the current Internet architecture has served as the foundation of most modern technology ecosystems today, there is huge opportunity to rethink approaches and technology to develop a next generation of the Internet that moves from basic transport to full awareness of the content, services, and higher level contextual elements that are today the key enablers for tomorrow’s technical ecosystems," said John Roese, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Huawei North American R&D and Enterprise Global Competency Center. "This is both disruptive thinking and entirely necessary work to assure that the platform of our industry and global economy is always moving forward at pace with the emerging business models and user demands. Huawei is excited to be part of this leading work just as we are excited to have contributed to the scaling of the existing mobile and fixed line Internet of today."

PARC’s CCN research team is headed by research fellow Van Jacobson, one of the primary contributors to the technological foundations of today's Internet. Jacobson’s algorithms for the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) helped solve the problem of congestion and are used in more than 90 percent of Internet hosts today. Widely credited with enabling the Internet to expand in size and support increasing speed demands, Jacobson helped the Internet survive a major traffic surge without collapsing.

"The Internet was designed to allow conversations between computers," Jacobson said. "Today, however, we don't want our TVs, tablets and phones to chat – we want them to deliver content in the way of movies, music, books, and magazines. The Internet has been able to handle this shift from conversation to content but it hasn't been easy. Every day millions of dollars of CAPEX and OPEX are invested in tricking it into operating far outside its design parameters. Internet-based content consumption is reaching a scale where tricks no longer work."

Jacobson continued, "The purpose of the ENC is to help people from various industries use CCN, an evolved Internet architecture that efficiently handles both communication and distribution, to transform the Internet into something that facilitates, rather than fights, new services."

About CCNThere is much discussion and coverage regarding the Internet slowing down and becoming sluggish, congested, and possibly even out of date. The Internet was originally designed as an end-to-end "communications network", but has become a "distribution network" for multimedia sharing. The architecture leads to many problems as we try to adapt an infrastructure optimized for point-to-point communication to handle the exponential flood of digital media. CCN enables people to ask for content by name (rather than arbitrary address), finding it from the nearest location (rather than source server only), and ensuring greater security (by securing the actual content, not the pipes carrying it). For more information, visit www.parc.com/ccn.

CCN has gained significant momentum, including:

An open source code CCNx release to enable network research experimentation and to establish a foundation of open core protocols for content networking

An active open source community, with ongoing projects around the world, which held its first meeting at PARC in 2011

About ENCThe Emerging Networks Consortium (ENC) is an open industry consortium of industry players that can include ISPs, consumer electronic, content providers, OEMs (from telecommunications, enterprise, healthcare, and defense sectors), Internet services and applications, hardware and chipset manufacturers, and venture capitalists collaborating to advance CCN and its applications to all member organizations. Hoping to attract additional members, ENC seeks to unite global industry efforts, foster discussion on standardization, and develop coherent vision for accelerated adoption of CCN for the benefit of member organizations. The first ENC Annual Members Meeting will be held at PARC on April 23-25. A one-day Executive Summit will be held in October, targeting strategic discussions between member representatives. For more information on how to join the ENC, please visit www.parc.com/consortium, or contact consortium@parc.com.

About PARCPARC, a Xerox company, is in the Business of Breakthroughs®. Practicing open innovation, we provide custom R&D services, technology, expertise, best practices, and intellectual property to Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies, startups, and government agencies and partners. We create new business options, accelerate time to market, augment internal capabilities, and reduce risk for our clients. Since its inception, PARC has pioneered many technology platforms – from the Ethernet and laser printing to the GUI and ubiquitous computing – and has enabled the creation of many industries. Incorporated as an independent, wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox in 2002, PARC today continues the research that enables breakthroughs for our clients' businesses.

About Alcatel-LucentThe long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leading innovator in the field of networking and communications technology, products and services. The company is home to Bell Labs, one of the world's foremost R&D organizations, responsible for breakthroughs that have shaped the networking and communications industry. Alcatel-Lucent is committed to making communications more sustainable, more affordable and more accessible as we pursue our mission – Realizing the Potential of a Connected World.

About BTBT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach. In the year ended 31 March 2011, BT Group’s revenue was £20,076m with profit before taxation of £1,717m. British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. For more information, visit www.btplc.com.

About France Telecom-OrangeFrance Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with 172,000 employees worldwide, including 105,000 employees in France, and sales of 45.3 billion Euros in 2011. Present in 35 countries, the Group had a customer base of 226 million customers at 31 December 2011, including 147 million customers under the Orange brand, the Group's single brand for internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the company operates. At 31 December 2011, the Group had 167 million mobile customers and 14 million broadband internet (ADSL, fibre) customers worldwide. Orange is one of the main European operators for mobile and broadband internet services and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.

About FutureWei Technologies (R&D Center for Huawei)FutureWei, is the R&D Center for Huawei in the US, and is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. Through our dedication to customer-centric innovation and strong partnerships, we have established end-to-end advantages in telecom networks, devices and cloud computing. We are committed to creating maximum value for telecom operators, enterprises and consumers by providing competitive solutions and services. Our products and solutions have been deployed in over 140 countries, serving more than one third of the world's population. For more information, visit online: www.huwei.com Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/huaweipress and YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/HuaweiPress

About MACHMACH connects and monetizes the telecom world with its comprehensive and growing portfolio of cloud-based communication services, called MACH Embrace. It provides its 650 operator customers with solutions to monetize mobile data, simplify interoperability between networks, optimize wholesale processes and protect revenues. For more information, visit www.mach.com.

About PanasonicPanasonic Corporation is a worldwide leader in the development and manufacturing of electronic products for a wide range of consumer, business, and industrial needs. Based in Osaka, Japan, the company recorded consolidated net sales of 8.69 trillion yen (US $105 billion) for the year ended March 31, 2011. The company's shares are listed on the Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and New York (NYSE:PC) stock exchanges. For more information, please visit http://panasonic.net.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2011 consolidated sales of US$143.1 billion. Employing approximately 222,000 people in 205 offices across 71 countries, the company operates two separate organizations to coordinate its nine independent business units: Digital Media & Communications, comprising Visual Display, Mobile Communications, Telecommunication Systems, Digital Appliances, IT Solutions, and Digital Imaging; and Device Solutions, consisting of Memory, System LSI and LCD. Recognized for its industry-leading performance across a range of economic, environmental and social criteria, Samsung Electronics was named the world’s most sustainable technology company in the 2011 Dow Jones Sustainability Index. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com.